Captain Catharsis, El Matador, and Amo II seal Eck’s second coming. (GERS … 5 Well …1)

You’ve got to be focussing in one, wrong direction for the obvious to be blinding. In Romeo and Juliet the eponymous dude is actually chasing another piece of skirt, going all gay over some quine called Rosaline, before he falls madly in love with the eponymous chick. Me, this very Sunday? I was off to Hampden expecting to feel almost guilty about the repetitious, bullying nature of the probable Rangers triumph! Yet, I left the Mount Florida area this evening and drove back over the setting sun-kissed Kinsgton Bridge feeling contentment and excitement in equal measure.

My pre-match thinking went thus: We were in our 30th league Cup final, Motherwell in their 3rd - come ON! McLeish has taken us to as many League cup finals in his time at Ibrox as Motherwell have managed in their entire history! That’s noh nice - that’s just greedy. There’s currently a lot of chatter “dahn sahwf” about Chelsea not having won the league in exactly 50 years while they sit atop the Premiership and Newcastle making the semis of an FA Cup competition they haven’t won since - well - since the last time Chelsea were champions of England. Thing is, neither of those sides have as yet actually repeated those feats of a half-century ago. Today Motherwell were playing in their first League Cup final since that same 1954-55 season - and most folk expected that to be the extent of the achievement.

I work with a couple of Well fans - one a season-ticket holder and mate, the other one of the nicest people you could hope to meet - and this was not helping my conscience. As I said in Thursday night’s tribute to Davie Cooper, there’s no way a League Cup final win could mean as much to us this weekend as it would to the Motherwell faithful. Yes, we wanted to claim the cup for the 24th time so as to again have won it exactly TWICE as many times as Celtic but my “seen it all before - nothing surprises me” mental leitmotif meant such desires seemed pedantic in comparison to the Lanarkshire club’s. When that starts happening then you’ve maybe aquired that most emasculating of football traits - impartiality! What’s happening to me? perhaps it’s my diet …

Yesterday I was starved of what I need most on a Saturday - live, in the flesh football. In desperation I even turned to Rugby Union. I watched France beating Italy in Rome and, despite the BBC’s best efforts to interrupt the celebrations with badly-timed interviews, enjoyed Wales securing their first Grand Slam in almost 30 years. At the same time as the beautifully ugly France-Italy game another Welshman was doing the business for that other Celtic nation - Glasgow Celtic. O’Neill’s side have, as expected, gone two-points above us but the manner of their victory was not as clear-cut as I expected of all their remaining games but one this season.

When the Beeb flashed up news of Barry Robson’s equaliser for Dundee United, I immediately switched over to Setanta, something I’d been singularly refusing to do for the duration of the game which would put Rangers into second place in the SPL. I’m not in any way averse to watching Celtic on TV (despite the stomach-churning close-ups of their fans attempting to look like the “salt of the earth”, happy-go-lucky libertines one second and then, when their team’s only drawing with ten minutes to go, baying “conspiracy!” with hate-filled delusion when their players don’t get a penalty simply for wearing a Celtic top. Yeeeeeuch!) , it’s more that I was in the huff with Setanta yesterday. I got out my kip ridiculously fu**ing early for a Saturday morning just so I could get a few necessaries out the way in time to enjoy the 1-hour highlights package of last week’s Bundesliga matches. It was advertised for 10am so at 9.45 I’m bursting back into the hoose with an armful of messages just aquired from Morrisons, leaving me just enough time to prepare a hearty breakfast before the Deutscher fussball-fest began. I bite into my weetabix just as Hansa-Rostock score against Bochum in a relegation clash. There’s no commentary. Two minutes later, there’s no programme. We’re back to the bl**dy French Ligue 1 highlights with no warning and no apology … and NO SIGN OF A REPEAT SHOWING OF THE GOALS FROM THE WORLD’S MOST INTERESTING LEAGUE!

Anyway, I forgive the Irish TV station when Dundee United equalise. I turn over and strait-jacket candidate number 1, Bellamy soon makes it 3-2 to Celtic but the game’s so interesting I keep watching. I was wondering why Celtic weren’t 3 or 4 goals in front and thinking that maybe my assesment is wrong. Maybe they aren’t gonnae waltz to the SPL title after all. But I soon discover different. When Robson is lining up an injury-time free kick for the Arabs I’m reminded this is the same Robson who scored a last-minute free-kick equaliser against us at Ibrox earlier in the season (ye might well remember it!), a kick which he mucked up originally but put straight into the net when the ref ordered a re-take. When he makes a hash of the kick against Celtic and the ref again orders a re-take I’m thinking “This is too poetic be true” - and it was. Celtic didn’t want to win this game handsomely because (a) they’re going to win the league on GOAL-DIFFERENCE to ensure complete revenge for 2003 and (b) their goalie needed to make a match-winning, season-turning save if he was to be fully forgiven for the mistake against Gergory Vignal which put us top of the league. That’s every Celtic player now ready to rectify the injustice of Rangers’ 2002/2003 title triumph. Ach well, at least Big Rab’s getting his eye in for the San Siro next week.

And how will we feel next week? How will we feel next Saturday night as the vast array of talent in blue called Italia line up against poor wee Scotland? We’ll feel like underdogs. We’ll be intimidated by the larger support of our opponents, even though the Scotland fans will sing their hearts out in the San Siro (the Scotland fans are the ones who’ll actually watch the game - although I think only two members of the self-cliched “tartan Army” actually know the rules). We’ll also feel the Italian tifosi don’t know how lucky they are, all turning up expecting at least a four-goal margin of victory and being in no way truly excited about it when it happens. The Milanese crowd will be happy, yes - they’ll cheer in any goals the Azzuri do score - but it won’t be game which will remain in their memories for long. A Scotland win would be as celebrated as it would be unexpected - it’d be one of the greatest results in our history. We’d have a national holiday if we beat Italy so is it not a bit wasted on these big teams when they treat a victory in the same match as merely routine?

Oh yes - you’ve got it (I did kinda telegraph it, didn’t I): THIS was how I felt the Motherwell fans must have been thinking today. For how I as a Scotland fan will feel next week, read how they as Motherwell fans must have been thinking today. To my mind anyway, the Lanarkshire punters (the ones who weren’t wearing Red White and Blue) were thinking “These bams do this, on avergae, once a year - we’re at a Hampden final for the first time in fourteen years and even that’s our best ‘run’ since the fifties! If the final was won by the side who wanted it most we’d get the cup right now”. This assumption met my “seen it all before” delusion and - bingo! - I suspected I should really have been giving my ticket to a young Bluenose who was naive enough to get excited by such trivialities as the CIS Cup.

But I needed my football fix. So badly in fact that I was inside Hampden 55 minutes before kick-off. This is a record for me. I’ve only missed the kick-off of about half-a-dozen games in my entire life - and usually due to public transport - but I usually rush about like a green-arsed fly in order to achieve this. I’m pathalogically bad at managing my time and so I usually get into a ground with little more than two minutes to spare - in the days when we all went on the supporters bus I’d obviously be there in plenty time … but I’d usually be running to catch the bus! Today I took the car. Parked it in a street running parallel with Cathcart Road, near Cathkin Park - it was a Street I’d never set foot or tyre in before. I was in the main stand today but, in order to keep up the good karma I still walked the same route to the gorund as I’d covered before the Semi-final with United when I was sat in the North stand. I cut behind Third Lanark’s old ground and then down that steep street with the villa at the top which has a saltire on a flag-pole outside it. I discovered today that this street is called Bolivar Terrace, named after Simon “The Liberator” Bolivar, the guy who kicked the Spaniard out half of South America. There’s a plaque explaining this on the gable of one of the hooses - I’d never noticed it til today.

Motherwell at Hampden? Yeah, did that two years ago in the Scottish Cup semi-final. 4-3, a total goal-fest but that was a Saturday and a noon kick-off and today it was Sunday at 3 and I was in a different seat: And what a seat! Front of the Main Stand, the BT South Stand. I was sat in the part of the new Hampden which stood directly on top of the Schoolboy’s enclosure of the old Hampden, from where I watched my first ever in-the-flesh cup final. That 1981/82 classic in which Super Cooper got us out of jail with fifteen minutes to go. Rangers needed a trophy so badly back then. Those were the days when we NEVER won the league.

Then I saw the Motherwell fans to my right. The Claret and Amber looked strangely light and flashy today. These favours stood out against the red, white and blue bucket seats better than our fans’ did, for obvious reasons. There were only a few hundred in when I first took my smashing vantage point but they all seemed to have Motherwell flags and they roared like hell when their team came out for the warm-up. These people wanted it more than us.

Then the same people who’d sat around me at the semi-final, in the North Stand, began appearing in the seats around me in the South Stand - Rangers ticket office is a helluvan accurate operation! This older gent sat next to me that night and here he was again today, poly bag in hand and straight into my face with the inane chatter. His mad eyes never relinquished their stare - his eyelids appeared so drawn back that they’d probably never closed - much like his mouth. But as someone who can blether for Scotland himself, I tried my best to keep up with him as he told me how he never wore a Rangers scarf but did have a scarf and hat with him - they were in the bag - and that this was good sense as the way he’d come today involved going through the Motherwell fans which, aye, okay, wasn’t as bad as going through celtic fans but ye still had to be careful because there was always some nut-case wanting to have a go .. aye that’s that Peter Kay song - he’s a good voice on him - the youngsters like it because it’s a catchy tune …

The Peter Kay song. Fuck me. Show me the way to Amarillo - every night I’m slashing my wrists trying to get it out my head. Today, however, it was impossible as the deafeningly intrusive Hampden sound system belted it out and a bevvy of disturbingly young and incompetent cheerleaders performed unbelievably degrading “dance” moves in even more degrading outfits. If we’re all singing about 1690 then I suppose I can’t really demand “what Century are we living in” with any degree of real outrage but the pre-match entertainment was truly pathetic. And so with that in front of me and the mad chatter to the left of me I looked to the right. There were those Motherwell fans - their section of the ground was full now and they were making quite a spectacle. 15,000 of them. If only they could have that many at Fir Park every home game - och, how many times have we said that about Cup Final underdogs? Not very original. Heard it all before. Just think, instead, of all the families attending their first ever Motherwell game, maybe even their first ever football match - that’s a great positive.

But then my view’s distracted by yet more folk in flash suits/dresses They’re everywhere. Various levels of hospitality but all centering around the cenre of the Main Stand. So many of the glammed-up junket women would find themselves suddenly having to pop to the loo during match - they’d take whatever route allowed most men to see them. Probably the same kind of women who taught those wee lassies on the pitch their subtle choreography. Waste of a ticket - could have gone to a Motherwell fan.

In the sweep of seats in front of me stood three blokes, all in different rows but going from left to right their Rangers strips said “Novo 9; Prso 10; Cooper, 11, legend”. This cheered me. Especially as Big Marv hadn’t been out warming up. No chance of two successive League cups for the big guy. Could he not have healed himself? Perhaps God isn’t too keen on his flock laying hands upon themselves.

And then, suddenly, the realisation. It hit me like a Jorg Albertz free-kick. All this madness around me and negativity going through my napper suddenly demanded an antidote. What is the one thing in the world which I need to make me feel centred and happy? Oh, here it comes now - down the hampden tunnel and onto the pitch. I think they call it “Rangers Football Club.” NOW I’m happy - NOW I feel guilty about nothing, annoyed by nowt - now I feel life is crystal clear and as simple as ABC. It’s the RFC. I’d been in some strange kind of mood all weekend - what was that all about? Jeezus - it was PRE-MATCH FU**ING NERVES!

“Motherwell wanted this more”?? “Their fans wanted this more”? What fans were those then? Surely not the 15,000 folk to my right of whom at least 75% were TOURISTS. The Rangers support was stretching from the centre of the Main stand right round the “Rangers End”, the entire North Stand and half-way along the Jock Stein end for a reason - because we have ten times as many season ticket holders as Motherwell’s average home gate. The Rangers support doesn’t look so especially thrilled to be here because, well, we’re ALWAYS here. We’ve fu**ing PAID for Hampden. The “Rangers End” is called the “Rangers End” FOR A REASON - The national team apart, Only Celtic can rival us for the number of times a team’s brought up to three-quarters of the crowd to this ground. Those Motherwell fans want it more? No - when you have the size of support Rangers have, it’s self-evident which club wants it more. There were fewer Rangers fans at the game today than attend a home league fixture at Ibrox. We couldn’t get enough tickets - Motherwell got at least twice as many as they deserved. I’ve nothing against them but, in terms of which club has the most fans caring enough about their team to actually go and watch them, Motherwell’s ticket allocation was a charity job. It MUST be done to keep Scottish Football alive but it highlights the Rangers DESIRE for success is nothing short of insatiable - we needed this cup more than anyone else in the country, with the possible exception of Celtic … and that’s why we had to give the hooped horrors a going over in the quarter-final.

The Motherwell support today showed great affection. The Rangers fans show lust-filled love and adoration and pain and joy and just a sheer fu**ing desperation to avoid the interminable levels of humiliation which another trophyless season would bring - all of which the Steelmen will never fathom. I see those Red and Black socks and my heart melts. I see that Blue jersey and there’s only one team for me. We’ve won the league Cup 30 times, you say? Just thirty??!! That’s APPALLING! It’s been going since 1947 - that means there’s been almost another thirty seasons when we HAVEN’T won it!! Why aren’t Rangers winning every cup, always??!!

Did you see the streamers coming onto the pitch today? Did you feel the stands shake as we did the bouncy? Did you see the flags and the strips and the lassies with the blue scarves on and the boys all roaring? How can a club with THAT kind of support fail to win EVERY COMPETITION EVER PLAYED??!! No wonder we blew Motherwell away. This cauldron is OUR world - this is where Rangers live and die. We can only breathe in front of full houses through fielding players who give their all for silverware -that’s our base level. For Motherwell today was historic - Rangers ARE historic. Our fans are pre-historic in their atittudes? Yeah - some of us. Our songs are hysterical in their sectarianism? Yes, some of them. But at the centre of it all is a beautiful Football Club and an amazing support. The carnival of colour and noise we put on today stemmed from decades of passion.

Maurice Ross is often regarded as a joke player at Ibrox - not really Rangers class. While the streamers were still hitting the trackside and the pitch he was sent away down the inide-left channel by Buffel and he elegantly, sublimely, contemptuously lifted that ball over the head of the Well goalie and we were ahead after three minutes. Joke players put on that jersey and start emitting winners medals like pellets.

That well goalie is one Gordon Marshall. He wore his green jersey today to remind us who he played for when he gave us our happiest memories of him. But, even after leaving celtic, Gordon was dropping the ball at the feet of Peter Lovenkrands to allow us to destroy Kilmarnock. Now he’s at Motherwell and he’s leaving himself in the middle of nowhere when he comes for a corner and big Sotirios Kyrgiakos is heading the ball into the net behind him and there’s barely ten minutes on the clock and Ranges are 2-0 up. This guy’s Greek, he can hardly speak a word of English and he’s scoring deciding goals in Cup Finals after two months in the country. That’s what happens when you play for that Gersey.

Motherwell come back at us - yes. There’s a panic because they score so quickly after our second. Barely quarter of an hour gone and it’s 2-1. Just like that, the game’s been turned from a Rangers-romp into a crazy goal-fest which could go either way. But that’s what happened in the semi-final. Dundee united were being destroyed at 2-0, pulled one back and started making Rangers wobble a bit. Being so good, you sometimes look at how far you can fall - it throws you off balance. Partridge, the Motherwell centre-half, did get a good header in but was it a free-kick in the first place? The linesman thought Sotirios was pulling a shirt as he effected a spectacular clearence. Where’s Andy Davis when you need him? Then I look at my ticket stub - the section of the ground I’m sat in is section “P2″ … no worries - the conspiracy is alive and well: Must just have been a temporary blip.

Nearly thirty years ago Rangers were trailing 3-1 at Fir Park, Motherwell. Our fans invaded the pitch, the game was held up, the Motherwell players shit themselves and Rangers won the game 5-3. Today one Bluenose got onto the pitch after Motherwell’s goal. The stewards were so busy picking up the cascade of red, white and blue streamers they forgot to watch for mental drunks getting onto the one part of the stadium they’re not permitted. He was booed by almost every Rangers fan in the ground. We’d just lost a goal, yes, but behaviour like this costs us so much more. He suddenly realised he wasn’t a hero and, in fact, didn’t have a friend in the stadium. He was hated by the fans he so enjoyed being one of. This fellah should be on suicide watch tonight - and he should be forgiven straight away. Obvously wrecked. Obviously loves Rangers to the point of psychosis. I know how he feels. And so does our current captain - very much our hero.

The Gers-Dundee United semi was at Hampden too. Most of these players played that night - the Rangers ones. When you have a huge support - when so many people want to follow you that they have to play your games at the national stadium, you have the advantage of being used to the surface, the environment of the biggest games. Ricksen scored a direct free-kick against United that night - he does it again today, AGES before half-time. HE curls in a low one from twenty yards. He’s The Rangers player of the year already - surely Scottish Player Of The Year is a formality now. I always imagined it would come at Parkhead, Nando’s moment of complete redemption, the moment he swung full circle from ultimate zero of August 2000 to ultimate hero of the present.

In our first win at parkhead in those five years he did set up both the goals - and he scored on that ground just a month previously. This in itself is a minor miracle when we look at his early Ibrox career. But his catharsis was realising he’d be out the door if he kept effing up, if he kept drinking - he stopped drinking, became captain, has scored in every competition we’ve played in this season (bar the Champions League qualifyer) and has scored in all but one round of this - his first trophy win as Rangers captain. Nando lifts the cup - that’s yer redemption right there. He gets the madness out his system now by inflicting really bad tattoos on himself but he is Mr Industry personified with the shot of a master craftsman. I was stood there today looking directly down on the podium as he lifted that cup. What a turn around - he’s now the first name on the team sheet and he’s now officially a GOOD SIGNING. And a re-signing at that. Last year he seemed to be staling on a new deal and I felt cheated after all he’d put us through - but he’s here for the rest of his best years now - and today completed Nando’s repayment plan to the Bears and Bearettes.

But Rangers are so ruthless in their pursuit of perfection that the guy who bought Ricksen is long gone. And one of his predecessors as captain - Lorenzo Amoruso - is also gone .. or is he? Sotirios Kyrgiakos bulleted home a fantastically powerful header into the Rangers end goal to make it five-one today. It was so reminiscent of Big Amo’s winner in our last trophy triumph: The 2003 Scottish Cup Final. But Sotirios also has the hair, the highly-animated gesticulations, the pleading and remonstrating with officials and opponents … as he kicks them. When he lifted the Cup today he did it “bigger”than anyone else. Whe he scored that final goal he celebrated as if he’d been doing it all his life. This was the kinda stuff he’d been born to do - just like Amo, Sotirios has his moments of waywardness but they bother him far far less than they bother us in the stands. he knows he’s great - he knows he’s SPECTACULAR!

So, there you have it. Aother of those colourful bits of Rangers history. Another anecdote for the grandchildren. The day five goals were scored by defenders in a cup final (We’ll call Ricksen a right back for the sake of this claim). But one goal is missing. The game finished 5-1. Who got the other Rangers goal? Well, who would you most have wanted to get it? Wee Nacho Novo. if Raul can score in a Cup Final at Hampden then so can our wee Spaniard.

El Matador has been outstanding all season. Even before he declared he’d score a goal for his mother, who sadly passed away last year, we wanted this fellah to have his moment. Talk about “wanting it more”! Suitably it came at the end of our best move of the game. When all you want is a striker to apply a finishing touch, Ignacio Novo will do the job as beautifully as anyone. And you know who set him up - it just had to be Big Dado Prso. Losing a Champions League final last season may not be QUITE compensated by lifting the League Cup but Dado had his day and when he played his strike partner through on goal and the ball was lifted over Marshall just as it was lifted over the current bumbling Celtic goalkeeper at parkhead last month, we all knew we had our second landmark win of the season. The victory at parkhead was sealed by a Novo lob. Ever since then we’ve been scared to blow teams away. As celtic fans would say in 1989 , we lost our MoJo. Now, on the first day of returning to second place in the SPL, we banged in two in the first seven minutes, were 3-1 up at the break and finished 5-1 victors.

Now, at last, the players should believe they can lead from the front. Alex McLeish may now have won as many domestic trophies as Martin O’Neill but I don’t think the bespectacled one will be swapping his three league championships for Eck’s three League cups anytime soon. McLeish has won just one SPL title - given the circumstances of his tenure and the quality of his main opponent, that’s no too bad at all. What he has to do now, however, is use the smell of brasso - just HOW shiney is it possible to make one trophy??!! I could see the League Cup gleaming even when the players took it up to the Gers fans in the Jock Stein stand? - as a huntsman uses the scent of fox to whip the hounds into a frenzy of ruthlessness. Silver-lust must take over from “aw naw! We’re top of the league - let’s get off quick!”. To win the SPL we’ll have to win ALL our remaining games. The season is now one long series of Cup Finals and Alex McLeish has never lost a Cup final as Rangers manager.

An on-form Aberdeen at Pittodrie when we were at our lowest ebb; Celtic at Ibrox when McLeish had lost his last seven Old Firm matches. Our two hardest games in this season’s CIS League Cup competition were the ones which got us into the semis. Our two easiest saw us score twelve goals to two against at Hampden Park. So when the papers describe today as just a routine Rangers romp, let’s remember what went into it. True - there was no mass hysteria and I’m not getting guttered tonight - but look at what losing to Raith Rovers in 1994/95 did to Celtic. That league Cup final, where the cuddly wee team triumphed, probably helped Rangers to Nine-In-A-Row. The Gers today, this latest Rangers team, were the total opposite of that Celtic side of ten years ago - we know how to win trophies now, we like it and there’s only one left for us to win …

McLeish saved us from a Celtic dynasty with his first League Cup win in 2002 - that spurred us on to beating them in the Scottish Cup final of 2002 and showing O’Neill wouldn’t be winning anymore trebles anytime soon. Beating Celtic again in the 2003 final gave us that final drive of confidence to seal a treble of our own. When Rangers win the League cup under Alex McLeish, even better things quickly follow. Rangers won’t end a second succesive season trophyles - we can relax. The transition campaign of Celtic dominance was intended to be 2002/2003 but McLeish was still coming to terms with the job then and won the treble by mistake. We simply delayed the shite season til 2003/2004. This, McLeish’s third team but the first which is truly and wholly his own, has obtained some solid evidence of its worth at the first chance - defeating Celtic enroute and actually destroying teams we were expected to destroy in the semi and the final makes this an absolutely flawless, beautifully delivered cup win.

I’ve seen Rangers winning so many trphies and, yes, it does always feels the same: Natural. But everyone loves doing what comes naturally … and we want to do it again and again and again … because it’s beautiful. And the beautiful people are the best ones to do it with. This Rangers team really are gorgeous.